The Centralization of Imperial Power in China During Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, in Light of Tomasz Szpot’s Historia Sinarum Imperii

Abstract

This article examines the centralization of imperial power in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties through a specific reading of Historia Sinarum Imperii, an unpublished Latin manuscript by the Polish Jesuit Tomasz Ignacy Dunin Szpot (1644–1713). Situating Szpot’s work within the intellectual traditions of the seventeenth-century Jesuit mission and Sarmatian political thought, the study employs a historicalcomparative method that combines textual analysis of Jesuit sources with insights from modern sinological scholarship. Particular attention is given Szpot’s conceptualization of imperial authority through the animacorpus metaphor, his rejection of tyrannicum, and his emphasis on legal constraints, bureaucratic mediation, and the libertas monendi as internal limits on centralized power. By comparing Szpot’s interpretation with modern analyses by Joanna Waley-Cohen, Timothy Brook, and Ch’ien Mu, the article demonstrates that Szpot articulated an early modern understanding of Chinese imperial centralization as a system that combined strong monarchical authority with moral and institutional restraint. At the same time, Szpot’s explanation of the Ming collapse reveals his awareness of the structural vulnerabilities inherent in such a centralized system when moral leadership and bureaucratic harmony failed. The study argues that Historia Sinarum Imperii should be reconsidered not merely as a compilation of Jesuit knowledge about China, but as a significant contribution to the comparative history of political thought and the early formation of Western Sinology.